Universal Nature: Philosophical Fragments from the Writings of John Burroughs

While becoming the master of the nature essay, focusing upon commonplace birds and other backyard curiosities, John Burroughs cultivated a real-world philosophy rooted in Emerson’s musings on God, man and nature yet fully embracing Darwin’s science of evolution. Universal Nature is a collection of philosophical fragments extracted from Burroughs’s writings then arranged chronologically to show the development of his ideas from the fields and woods to the universe at large. A biographical introduction provides the background necessary to put these ideas in context and show how the observations and reflections of a not-so-simple countryman living a century ago are still relevant today.